My favorite website

I know this is going to sound totally unoriginal and very expected but my favorite website would have to be........Facebook. It's definitely the website I go on the use the most. I'm not one of those people who has a thousand friends on their account, I just like to make sure I have everyone that I interact with on it. It's a great way to communicate, better than email for multiple reasons. You can post pictures for friends to see, update your status to let people in general know what's going on and send friends public as well as private messages. You can also get updated on friends' lives within fifteen minutes by just browsing. In fact, Facebook is so good that many people become addicted. I have multiple friends who have shared concern that they are so obsessed with Facebook and spend so much time on it that it has taken a toll on their grades in school. I don't think it will stick around for many more years though. There have been a number of websites before it such as MySpace, Msn and Aol messenger, which are all no longer popular. It's just a matter of time before someone creates a more advanced version of Facebook under another name and that is what everyone will switch to.

Do your zodiac sign traits describe your personality?

Woah! "Life Pursuit: Emotional and financial security. Secret Desire: To have a secure, happy and wealthy marriage." So far, very much like me, but who doesn't want that? Basically my sign says that I look calm on the outside but inside I'm running with emotions, that I am a very social person but in reality let very few people get close. That I am stubborn, and hide my true self and that is why I may be considered snobby or boring. It says that separate myself from the world around me and am closely associated with "feeling good" so like comfort, pleasure etc,. I especially enjoy all of the senses like touch, smell and taste, am an outdoorsy person and like to plan for the future. I guess some of this is true and some isn't. It's actually very hard for me to hide my emotions, even if I try my face somehow betrays me. People know when something is wrong and it's just hard for me to hold feelings in for long. I am social, that part is right, and as long as I see that you are a good person I let you in easily. I treat people they way they treat me. I used to be very stubborn and was told that a lot, but I have learned to open my mind up more and realize that I am not always right. I have had friends who have admitted to thinking that I was snobby before they knew me, maybe it's because I am not super outgoing when I am surrounded by people I don't know well, but the zodiac got that right. I do enjoy comfort very much, I enjoy relaxing and having slow bummy days where I don't do anything. I also absolutely love food, perfume and nice clothes. And finally for the last trait that says I am an outdoorsy type of person, that is definitely wrong. The only outdoors activity that I like is going to the beach, and that's because you can just relax and lay there soaking in the sun.

Something that changed my thinking.

It wasn't any one event or experience, it was more like a series of events and experiences. I guess it started once I entered high school. I had new friends and old friends and was surrounded by a lot of new people. As time went on I lost some friends and it wasn't a peaceful kind of separation, normally it was b/c of something really stupid that left us both angry and hating each other. There was also drama with people I wasn't close to, over things like boys, rumors and just calling each other out on things. I always felt like it was never my fault, people just felt like fighting and being catty and it happened to be with me. And honestly I still feel like that about a lot that happened, because I am not the type of person to start something unless I absolutely have to, but I am the kind of person to finish something. And that's exactly how my attitude developed. When someone would come at me unreasonably or disrespectfully, I had to make sure I let them know that I didn't take that lightly. I would make a huge deal, get into a fight (not physically but verbally) and made sure to put that person in their place. It didn't always work out of course, but basically the outcome was always the two of us becoming enemies. But I felt like I had pride and principles and if those people weren't going to respect them I wanted them to know that I wasn't cool with them and didn't like them. So roughly five years later I now realize how much better and less stressful life is when it's enemy free and when you don't hate anyone. I have to say, for a person with my personality it takes huge effort to be nice to someone that I am having a conflict with instead of just telling them off, but you feel so much better at the end if you made a friend instead of an enemy that it is totally worth it.

Films or text? Why?

I've known the answer to this question for many years already, it's nothing that I have to think about. I prefer films simply because I learn faster when I have something visual to demonstrate the information to me. I think a lot of people are that way. It make sense, our world is a visual place so when we have to learn new things we are probably going to learn faster, better and overall more efficiently when it is actually demonstrated to us. Also, oftentimes films can somehow give a message or a feeling to a person that is very hard to express in words, like the saying goes "A picture is worth a thousand words." But there is also another difference that I have noticed between the two different learning styles. I pick up visual information faster but the information that I take out of text sticks with me for longer. I think it's because when you read you have to figure out what the text means and how to retain that information yourself, but in a film you have someone else already explaining all the info to you. Because you understand it right off the bat you don't worry about remembering it as much. So the less effort you put into learning material the faster you will forget about it. But that's just me, it is probably totally different for many people, as we all know we are all very unique.

Education in the US: are we falling behind?

I myself don't know any statistics on education differences between U.S.A. and other countries. But I do know that the U.S. economy is doing way better than the economies of many, many other countries, so we must be doing something right. I also got the chance to attend school in Ukraine for almost four years so I can use that experience to reflect upon a little. What I remember was that I started out first grade (which in Ukraine you start at seven years old) by making very good grades, all A's I think. As I went up in grade levels the material became harder and gradually my grades declined. The teachers were very strict, I remember being terrified of being called on by the teacher every day because I knew that I couldn't give a perfect answer. I would sit with my mom behind my desk at home and have her try and tutor me in math for hours and hours before I could go outside and play. When I mentioned that my grades declined I didn't mean that they were bad, I meant that they weren't all A's anymore so I was still OK, it was just getting difficult. Also, in Ukraine everyone skips the forth grade (I have no idea what the reasoning behind this rule is) and jumps right into fifth. So the school is divided into two parts, grades 1-3 with all the little kids and grades 5-11 with all the older kids. Once I started the "older kids school" that's when it really became very difficult and it was also the first time I received C's on my report card. Fortunately, I did not finish fifth grade in Ukraine because I moved to America that spring and jumped into 6th grade the following fall. Throughout my middle school career I got mostly A's and it was a breeze, in high school I had a GPA of 3.2, and honestly I didn't even really try because I knew I could get good enough grades by just doing the minimum. So yes I think that maybe we are falling behind in education but so far we are still ahead of other countries in many aspects so I don't think it should be considered something of immediate concern.

Thoughts on Plagiarism

Plagiarism is cheating, and cheating, just like shoplifting or violence is a question of ethics and moral value. I know that some people consider both cheating and shoplifting as OK things to do. Their thinking is that as long as you aren't hurting anyone by what you do and only benefitting yourself, it's not that bad. For me, I just don't do it because I don't see the need in doing it. First of all you have to spend hours online searching for the perfect pieces to plagiarize, then you have to make them all fit together, and then you have to be worried everyday until you get your grade that you will be caught and kicked out of school. To me it's not worth the risk or the stress that comes along with it. There are other consequences that come along as well, that people don't consider. When we use someone else's material instead of making ourselves analyze a topic we don't exercise our brains in that area. We learn from everything we do and by simply copying we limit the amount of academic learning achieved.

Is there a diffrerence between racism and classism?

Racism is when there is an ascosiation with something negative or prejudice against a person/people that is based totally or mostly on their race. Classism has the exact same idea to it, but you just have to eliminate race from the definition. Although both of these definitions include groups of people being judged solemly from those traits, racism and classism are not the same thing. Race and class may be interwined with each other, escpecially in a very diverse country, but it is still definetly not the same thing. They are two different issues that take similar form when it comes to prejudice. If we classify those two as the same thing, then we could also add many more to the list. I do not know the word for this type of prejudice (all I can think of is "shallow-ism"), but what about people who don't want to associate with someone because they look unattractive to them? Or what about people who don't want to associate with people who don't seem as smart as them? I don't think there are words for those types of prejudice yet, but I am sure there will be. That is why it is important to recognize the difference between the different types of prejudice. All of those are a completely different topic that can each be discussed in depth.